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| March 20, 2000 | ||
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| CONGRESS Reprieve for Sonia The party president may have scored over the BJP in Bihar and on the Gujarat RSS issue by default. Can she consolidate her gains? By Lakshmi Iyer
Last week, Sonia earned her first spurs as leader of the Opposition in the 13th Lok Sabha when she brought the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government to its knees and forced it to get the Gujarat Government's controversial circular on the RSS withdrawn. And for once she led from the front as her partymen paralysed Parliament for 11 days. The agitation on the Gujarat circular ended the isolation that the Congress had faced during the winter session of Parliament when it found no support from the other opposition parties for its demand to delete Rajiv Gandhi's name from the Bofors charge-sheet. In the current face-off with the Government, it was the Congress that went out of its way to forge opposition unity. Its deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, Madhavrao Scindia, coordinated with the Left parties on a day-today basis, while chief whip Priyaranjan Das Munshi kept in touch even with parties averse to Sonia's leadership such as Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party and the Samajwadi Party. The Congress continued to value the new-found camaraderie in the opposition benches even after the prime minister agreed to a discussion of the RSS issue under Rule 184 in the Lok Sabha. Soon after the Government announced its intent, Sonia chaired a meeting of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) of the Congress in Parliament where it was resolved that the party would continue to preserve opposition unity at any cost. This commitment essentially meant that the party would even endorse the views of the communist parties on subsidy cuts and second-generation economic reforms. "Sonia to a large extent has already displayed her intent to back the Left on these demands in the course of her address at a public rally in Delhi on March 6," points out a PAC member. If the RSS issue in Gujarat had helped Sonia consolidate her status as leader of the Opposition, the Congress was bailed out of its initial dilemma in extending support to Laloo Prasad Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal government in Bihar by state Governor V.C. Pande. "We had delayed issuing our letter of support fearing a split in our state legislature party. We issued it a full hour-and-a-half after Nitish Kumar was invited to form the government," says a party MP. He admits that extending support to the RJD had damaged the Congress' credibility. After all, in the run-up to the state assembly elections everyone, including Sonia and Congress Working Committee members like Rajesh Pilot, had described the party's support to Laloo as a "mistake". Even the party's election manifesto was harsh on Laloo's jungle raj. "The governor's action gave us time to keep our flock together, shift the focus of public attention from our contradictory actions and help justify our conditional support to the RJD," says a party MP. "We have now managed to get a Congressman unanimously elected as Speaker of the Bihar Assembly." By focusing the nation's attention on the Bihar governor's action, the Congress also helped Sonia earn a reprieve of sorts. Initially she had received flak for delaying the party's decision on extending support to the RJD. At a time when the party needed to take the crucial decision, she was away in Madhya Pradesh. Worse, she had not delegated the decision-making to anyone in the party. But then by pushing the debate over the governor's action centre-stage, she managed to deflect attention from her own actions. The reprieve that circumstances have secured for Sonia clearly extends beyond parliamentary advantages to the Congress. The events strengthen her position within the party. The brownie points that she scored against the bjp on the rss issue and the limited victory she has pulled off in Bihar have been a setback to the dissidents who have been sharpening their knives since the Congress rout in last month's assembly elections in four states.
To an extent, dissent against Sonia's stewardship of the party received a fillip in early March when four former non-Congress prime ministers, including V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral, met and deliberated upon "the state of the nation". The meeting kindled hopes of forging an alternative alliance to the one led by the BJP. Even P.V. Narasimha Rao stirred similar hopes through an article he authored in a national daily, listing his views against disinvestment. But the outcome of Sonia's crusade against the RSS and the developments in Bihar reversed whatever effect the activities of the former prime ministers might have had on the dissidents. Congressmen close to Sonia, however, feel that she cannot afford to rest on her laurels after the political gains she has made by default simply because such gains do not lend themselves for consolidation. "Sonia will have to rebuild the party with planning and effort. The NDA will continue to give us opportunities like it did in Gujarat and Bihar. But that is not enough," explains a senior party functionary. To the pro-Sonia section in the party, it has been a matter of concern that the Congress president had not been able to chart out a path for revival of the party. "In the past two years, Sonia took six different positions on the Congress' stance vis-a-vis the RJD. She must identify clear-cut options of alliance partners in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and carry the party with her," argues one senior party leader . Another issue that is of concern to her supporters is that in the past two years as Congress president, she has not been able to demonstrate her ability to arbitrate on disputes, claims and counter-claims within the organisation. For instance, at the CWC meeting that deliberated for three hours on the question of extending support to the RJD, Sonia did not utter a word. "It was Pranab Mukherjee who came up with the idea of constituting a committee to negotiate with Laloo. Sonia merely agreed. Nobody asked her what was on her mind," rued a CWC member. If Sonia has to consolidate her political gains in Bihar and the success of her crusade against the RSS, she would have to desist from trying to run the party by proxy, as she has been doing all this while. As one party MP put it, "She should stop relying only on the AICC general secretaries to decide on the fate of the ordinary party worker. The senior leaders have no credibility with the cadre. She should take her own decisions." Or at least appear to take them. |
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Congress
President Sonia Gandhi recently stunned the political classes with a
confessional sound-byte. "Hamen abhi kuch nahin maloom (Right now I do
not know anything)," she said when asked about her party's strategy in
Bihar. Weeks later, however, the self-confessed ignoramus not only defied
her doomsayers but also managed to convert her ignorance into advantage --
to avoid a major split in the Bihar Congress unit and score a point or two
over the ruling National Democratic Alliance. In the ongoing budget session
of Parliament, both Sonia and her party demonstrated how they could simply
make best use of fortuitous circumstances to post political victories
without either struggle or strategy.